


You've Never Seen the Lonely Me

by Elster



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-05
Updated: 2011-02-05
Packaged: 2017-10-15 10:40:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/160001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elster/pseuds/Elster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"John has a fantasy. It was born in Afghanistan, in a night that had made his bones ache with a cold damp wind, under a sky that had been endlessly black, because the misty drizzle had quenched the stars. As fantasies went, it was rather tame. A bath, he remembers thinking quite clearly and apropos of nothing. A long peaceful soak in hot water."</p>
            </blockquote>





	You've Never Seen the Lonely Me

**Author's Note:**

> The title is, of course, borrowed from Placebo's Without you I'm nothing.  
> Thanks to leviathans_moon and kitsjay for the beta :)

You've Never Seen the Lonely Me

John has a fantasy. It was born in Afghanistan, in a night that had made his bones ache with a cold damp wind, under a sky that had been endlessly black because the misty drizzle had quenched the stars. As fantasies went, it was rather tame.

A bath, he remembers thinking quite clearly and apropos of nothing. A long peaceful soak in hot water.

It had made him smile.

And so he had kept that thought for himself. He never told it in the games of “When I'm home I will...”, it was his fantasy and he guarded it jealously. He thought of the bath when the nights were cold, when the showers were regulated to minimal water use, when the water smelt rotten, when there hadn't been a shower for days, when there was blood on him, when his muscles hurt and when he felt like he could never lose all the sand that was in his hair, eyes, ears and mouth- that clung to his body like shedding skin.

He couldn't exactly recall what it felt like, his last full bath dated back to before he went to uni, but that was good. A proper fantasy, like an orchid, has aerial roots.

Months after the injury he had sat on the bed in the tiny flat he couldn't afford and it had not felt like home, not like London, not like anything. Nothing had felt like anything, except for his shoulder and his leg, which felt like pain and failure, though the distinction was difficult. There had been phantom sand in his eyes and his throat and between the fingers that held his revolver. He had listened to the traffic outside and thought that everything worked quite well without him. He had looked at the gun and the shaking of his hand that vanished when he held it just so, just a bit tilted, pointed at his head. What does it matter?, he'd thought and then-

He had thought of hot water, a long peaceful soak. His bath.

It had made him cry.

And then he had laughed, with phantom sand that stung his eyes and rattled in his breath, with fake pain in his leg and real pain in his chest, because this shitty flat didn't even have a bathtub.

 

As if to make up for this, the Baker Street flat has a monstrosity that looks like the bathroom was built around it. Its white enamel is chipped in three places and reveals a dark dull metal that might just be cast iron, like the claws it stands on. Ridiculously pompous and approaching perfection.

“Beautiful,” John says and Sherlock looks at him with that curious stare he has. 

“I will need it tomorrow, if you don't object,” he says. 

_And if you do object, I will use it anyway_ , John gathers from his tone of voice. He's equally irritated and amused. 

That is until the next morning, when he stumbles into the room, tired and a bit confused about the new surroundings and the lack of pain in his leg, and finds the bathtub filled with earth. He has to sit down, sinks down with his back against the bathroom door, he's laughing so hard. He imagines a body in the earth, he imagines Sherlock meticulously noting the progression of putrefaction. He imagines the body wearing his uniform and he feels disconnected, like he is the one in the bathtub, under the earth, listening to someone else falling apart next to him.

It takes some minutes until he feels himself again, John Watson sitting on the cold tiles and being quite mad and quite alive. The feeling is less stifling than it usually is. He gets up, takes off his pyjamas and stands under the shower for some time, thinking of nothing. The knocking on the door startles him. “Ten minutes!” he shouts over the rushing water, then notices that he has forgotten his shower gel in the old flat.

“Sherlock? Can I use your,” he squints at the bottle and laughs, “shower crème with micromoisture technology?”

There is no answer, which John takes to mean that Sherlock is not there anymore. He uses the ridiculous shampoo, too, because it claims to have silk proteins and because its owner filled their bathtub with earth.

When he comes down into the living room, after a short detour upstairs to dry off and dress, Sherlock is sitting on the couch in pyjama bottoms, t-shirt and a dressing gown. He's balancing his laptop on his knees and typing furiously. John stands there a moment, staring at his new flat mate.

“There's earth in the bathtub,” he says, the inflection of the sentence a clear question. He can't help feeling a bit reassured about the whole going-mad-thing. It's all relative, isn't it?

If Sherlock recognizes the question, he doesn't seem inclined to answer. “You're making tea,” he says. “For me too, thanks.”

The kitchen is... interesting. John locates two mugs in a cupboard that contains mainly measuring cylinders and Erlenmeyer flasks. He fills the kettle, switches it on and comes back into the living room. For a second or two John contemplates asking Sherlock what's buried in their bathtub, then decides against it. He doesn't want to know. “For how long?” is all he asks.

Sherlock looks up from his laptop and out of the window for a moment, a contemplative look on his face, then back to his laptop. “Ten days, two weeks at the longest.”

“Ten d- What? Why?” John says before he remembers that he doesn't want to know. He stops Sherlock's explanation with a raised hand. “No, it's alright. Never mind.”

Sherlock looks at him with his strange pale inquisitive eyes. “Really,” he says mockingly.

“Well. It would be nice if you would tell me about,” he grasps for a word and fails, “things like this. Before,” he adds.

“I don't think I'll do this experiment again in the foreseeable future. It's tedious to get the earth up here and the results should be sufficient.”

“Experiment. Right.” John hesitates. “And the kitchen,” he prompts.

“Yes?”

“It's part chemistry lab.”

“Yes.”

The kettle clicks. John goes back to pour the tea. He thinks about Sherlock (who is... somewhere between eccentric and clinically insane), about the reasons why living here is a good idea (the cost, the rather nice flat, the unwarranted fact that he likes Sherlock and his special brand of insanity), and about compromise. Sharing a flat is all about compromise, right?

“I want the chemicals in the lower cupboards where they can't drip on my food,” he says as he places Sherlock's tea on the table before him. “And they go in a spill trough.”

Sherlock looks at him like he's some interesting new species, but he nods. “I can get one at Bart's.”

“Okay,” John says. “And I really don't want to know where you steal your lab equipment.”

Sherlock smiles at him as he shuts his laptop and they drink their tea in silence. It's a good morning, all things considered.

 

Life at 221b Baker Street is really quite easy, John discovers. It's just a question of adapting his expectations. As long as you don't expect Sherlock to do anything normal or even know what the normal thing would be, you're out of the woods.

Sherlock brings a spill trough and they reorganize the kitchen/lab in a way that both find acceptable. John implements a general food-above-chemicals-rule that includes the fridge and should make eating relatively save. He decides to buy lots of tupperware as soon as possible to ward off the solvent taste everything invariably acquires after two days in the fridge.

The living room remains chaotic, but it's a sort of organized chaos John can live with. When the newspaper pile gets too high to see the TV from the couch, he restacks it in front of Sherlock's bedroom door and the next day it's gone. John doesn't know if Sherlock throws them out or if his bedroom becomes some kind of labyrinthine tunnel system, and he doesn't particularly care. It's a thing with Sherlock, the paper piles. Magazines, books, files, notebooks, newspapers, they accumulate into small versions of the Tower of Pisa, leaning against walls or door frames or the nearest piece of furniture.

The bathroom stays miraculously clean. Well, relatively clean, John's pretty sure it wouldn't stand a chance before Mrs. Hudson's stern eyes, but the dust isn't clotting and there's no mould, so it's good enough for him. There's the beginning of a paper pile on the cabinet next to the toilet: the October issue of _Chemie in unserer Zeit_ , an _Atlas of Human Anatomy_ and a five-page-printout in Japanese. It's been eleven days and the earth is still in the bathtub. John stares at it while he's brushing his teeth. _We could grow vegetables_ , he thinks idly. 

“We could grow vegetables,” he says when he enters the kitchen. Sherlock is sitting at the table and reading a book. And waiting for John to come down and make tea.

“Not in the bathtub,” he says, “it would falsify my results.”

“Of course it would.” John remembers a time when being amused and being irritated used to be two separable feelings.

“I'm almost done,” Sherlock says.

“Good.”

And just like that, two days later, when John comes home from the appointment with his therapist, the bathtub is empty. He sees it out of the corner of his eye and doubles back to stand in the open bathroom door. It's not just empty, it's even clean. Sherlock is in the living room with an old computer monitor he found in the streets and a soldering iron. John hopes that he's not building a bomb. It's probably impossible to build a bomb from a computer monitor, but then it is Sherlock who's trying. Or, hopefully, not trying, but he can't be sure.

“Is the bathtub safe or should I disinfect it?” John asks.

Sherlock rolls his eyes at him as if the question was absolutely unreasonable. “I did that.”

John blinks. “Oh. Good. Thanks.”

Sherlock solders something.

After a moment's hesitation John asks: “There wasn't a body in the bathtub, was there?”

And there it is again: that puzzled and slightly delighted look, like Sherlock has no idea what John is talking about and finds it brilliant. “Insect larvae,” he says with a strange little half smile.

“Ah,” John makes, slightly embarrassed. “And- please tell me I didn't give you ideas just now.”

Full smile now. Full smile and Sherlock is switching off the soldering iron, standing up, coming over. “Are you hungry? There's this new Greek place I wanted to try.”

Full smile and no answer. Is it paranoid of him to worry?

 

Sherlock can't be bothered with shopping or cleaning or anything practical, and yes, it's frustrating at times, but most of the time John doesn't really care. It's not like Sherlock expects him to do the shopping for him, he'd probably just live with an empty fridge until it's convenient for him to remember that he needs to buy things. It's more that Sherlock steals his food occasionally and John can't really bring himself to mind that, considering that Sherlock rarely eats at all and gets him free meals in restaurants. He figures there's some kind of balance.

John finds the shopping soothing and nerve-wracking. He's mad, he's allowed to make no sense. It's so perfectly ordinary, a market full of harmless, normal people – that part _is_ soothing, pleasant even – and him, which is the nerve-wracking part. He feels so unreal. There's no room for the reality of danger, of war, of violence. He's a broken thing held together with twine. There are pieces of him he can't fit between oven-ready meals and household supplies. They all know what they're doing, being ordinary and harmless, buying stuff, living, being part of the civilised society. He feels disconnected. 

He didn't tell his therapist, he never tells her anything important. Because he doesn't trust her, she got that right. He thought about getting a new one, but that would be another stranger prying into him and it makes him feel uneasy. She's alright.

_I feel like a cancer cell_ , he didn't tell her. _I was part of something and now I'm not_ , he didn't say. _I don't know what I'm supposed to do, because I used to know, but it doesn't make sense anymore._

“I found a job,” he told her. “It will be good to be a doctor again,” he said and, “Asked my colleague out on a date. She's _[normal, harmless]_ really nice.” And she is, Sarah is wonderful, John's just not sure if he's with her for the right reasons. It always seems like the right idea when he thinks about it, but it feels a lot like doing the shopping.

He finds himself buying Sherlock's ridiculous shower products, because there are more than ten to choose from. More than ten is too much, he feels that his hair is not special enough to warrant this kind of thought. If Sherlock thought about his hair and came to the conclusion that it needed to be silkier, John won't stand in his way.

He thinks about the bath and it makes him nervous.

He'd just have to go home, but... he has the suspicion that it wouldn't really help, it wouldn't mean anything. He can't feel the phantom sand now and if it's still there his skin absorbed it like it absorbs the blood from his nightmares when he switches on the light. It's internal sand now, probably clotting here and there, but quite unobtrusive.

He buys foam bath in the end.

It's cold outside, so cold it stings the hand that's holding the bags and he has to switch every few minutes. He conjures the fantasy: warm water, floating. It would be silly not to have a bath just because it's not the purging thing he's made it up to be.

And yet, he is a bit relieved, when he comes home and finds that Sherlock is still under the shower. And then he's worried, because Sherlock's been showering even before he left the flat. He knocks, waits, knocks again, says “Sherlock?”, waits, and tries the handle. It's open. Sherlock's just standing there under the spray with the stony calmness he gets when he's deep in thought. A Sherlock-coloured mosaic of water droplets and John looks for signs of weakness, but he seems alright, invincible even, so John closes the door again.

Sherlock is in a strange mood, hasn't said a word since yesterday.

_Sometimes I don't talk for days on end_ , John remembers him saying. One of the first things he said to him. _Would that bother you?_ And John never answered, didn't quite register the question even. Never had time to think about it, because this strange man who would become his flat mate had already been three thoughts ahead. Sherlock is often frustrating and not a little annoying, so yes, if John had ever gotten around to think about it, his reply would have probably been no. _No, you shutting up for once wouldn't bother me at all._

But when it happens, he finds that it does.

At first he thought Sherlock was sulking. He's done that a few times and for the most ridiculous reasons. John accidentally throwing one of Sherlock's experiments off the kitchen table was a three hours sulk, for example, having eaten the biscuits and refusing to go out and buy a new packet because Sherlock wanted some _right this moment_ warranted twenty minutes of reproachful silence and hurt looks. John actually doesn't mind the sulking, as it is easy to ignore and gets boring for Sherlock very fast. It is even kind of entertaining, really, artfully aggressive sulking. Sherlock goes out of his way to make clear that, yes, he is sulking at you. _Cookie Thief. Ignorant Destroyer of Science._ Quite eloquent, John had considered taking pictures.

But this is different. This, whatever it is, is not eloquent or dramatic or quirky. It's not _Sherlock_ , simple as that. No complaining about boredom, no angling for attention, no being brilliant or infuriating or idiotic. He just shuts everything out, stays in his room or sits in his armchair for hours and walks the house like a ghost. Or blocks the shower, apparently. 

Yesterday, John tried to ignore it like he tries to ignore every annoying, worrying thing Sherlock does, because he's Sherlock and you can't stop him and he'll snap out of it eventually. But Sherlock isn't doing anything, and maybe John is going crazy, but that is something he just can't ignore. It's hard to ignore the absence of the sarcastic running commentary as soon as he switches on the telly. It's hard to ignore the untouched newspaper on the kitchen table or that his mobile and laptop are lying just where he left them.

“He gets like this sometimes,” Mrs. Hudson sighs, when he eventually escapes down to her apartment for a bit, because the sound of the running shower begins to grate on his nerves, “poor dear.” 

John is struck by the 'poor dear'. He'll never be able to understand Mrs. Hudson's perspective on Sherlock. When she talks about him you could get the impression that he really was a normal, nice young man. It's always a bit unbelievable, because Sherlock never sheds a false tear around her, never gives her one of those smiles he copied from normal people; he's just his manic self, maybe a tiny bit watered down on the gory details. There's just one explanation: she actually likes Sherlock. Which probably shouldn't be so mind boggling to John, considering, but – well, at least he wouldn't go as far as 'poor dear'. Probably.

When he comes back up Sherlock is in his armchair again, but there is no cry for tea or assistance. John watches him from the kitchen door for a long moment, but can't bring himself to enter the living room. He feels at a loss and it's strange, this feeling that he can't stand one more minute of _nothing_.

It occurs to him that shopping isn't so bad when he can come here and feel like he fits somewhere at all, even if it's a chaotic living room with paper towers and a kitchen filled with hazardous substances. But today is bad.

He can't sleep that night, lies awake and listens for any sign of movement. His bedroom is above the living room and usually he can hear when Sherlock goes to bed or, if it's one of the nights when Sherlock doesn't sleep, he can hear him wandering around. But there's nothing and he can't sleep. It's around two when he gives it up and shuffles down the stairs. Sherlock is still in his armchair, though he must have moved, the violin case lies open on the sofa, but the instrument inside is untouched.

“Can't sleep,” John says unnecessarily, and is disappointed when Sherlock doesn't point that out. “Tea?”

No answer. Of course not. Even the violin is silent.

John makes the second tea anyway and holds the cup before Sherlock's face until he takes it. He sits in his own armchair, cradling his cup, watching Sherlock. Sherlock is watching him, but there's nothing of the usual intensity, he seems subdued.

“You can play, if you like. I know, I told you to keep it down at night, but... well, I'm awake, so-”

Sherlock shakes his head.

He takes a sip and John's inner doctor is glad to see Sherlock at least drink something. Has he eaten?

The thing is, John gets it. Or he thinks he gets it; it's entirely possible, even probable, that he's projecting. But he has done the not talking thing himself, after he got back, before he met Sherlock. Some days were just deafening. It's like his blog. The silence is a blank screen, the concerned looks, the taunting of a blinking cursor. A feeling like the loss of language, like whatever it is he'd like to say can't be put into words someone else would understand. It made every sentence he came up with meaningless, so in the end there was nothing worth saying.

“Do you ever feel like cancer?” he tries and he knows he's not making any sense, but it doesn't matter, because Sherlock won't say anything. It feels safe.

They sit together in silence after that and drink their tea, which seems to be something that always works, no matter how wrong everything is.

John wakes the next morning from the crick in his neck and the pain in his shoulder and back. God, he's too old to sleep in a bloody armchair. There's a blanket. Sherlock has put a blanket on him. He didn't even know they had a blanket. His gratitude falls short anyway. “Don't ever let me fall asleep in this chair again,” he groans.

Sherlock gives him an indignant look. He's sitting on the couch, the violin cradled in his arms, the fingers of his left hand sliding along the strings without making a sound.

John sighs.

Standing up produces sounds nobody wants to hear from his body and his leg hurts from the few steps to the bathroom. After some hesitation, he runs the bath. It will make him feel tired the whole day, but he doesn't have to work and he can't possibly feel any more drained.

He makes tea and toast for Sherlock while he waits for the bathtub to fill, and puts them on the coffee table. Sherlock's bare feet are perched on the edge of it and John thinks for a millisecond that maybe he should be bothered by bare feet near the food, but in this household where it could be dead feet, bare feet are kind of harmless. He doesn't tell Sherlock he should eat something. It's a redundant remark and those tend to make Sherlock contrary at the best of times.

Then he goes to have his bath. The water is a bit too hot, but he can feel his cramped muscles relax. It's nice, if a bit calm, maybe he should have brought the radio. He lets himself sink down until the water covers his ears and listens to his heartbeat for some time. It feels strange, like there's nothing holding him together and still, he isn't falling apart. Or maybe he is, but whatever is breaking off is dissolved in the water like the cramp in his shoulder and that deceitful pain in his leg.

When he comes up again, he hears the violin, tentative notes drifting over from the living room.

It makes him smile.


End file.
